The first drop fell.
It was a hot summer night in June, and this marked the end of the relentlessly hot and dry days that the city of Chennai had gotten used to enduring.
Maybe it was the intoxicating smell that filled the air as the rain quenched the hard summer-dry ground. Or maybe it was that the whole world seemed to glow in an exquisite saturation of colors as the rain washed away the layers of dust, rendering the houses and the trees in the colony sparkling clean. Or maybe it was the raw happiness that he felt as he soaked in the pouring rain, visibility down to mere meters, nothing bothering him as he roamed down the muddy roads, humming meaningless verses in his favorite tune. Or maybe it was one of the hundreds of other small things. Whatever it was, rain made him euphoric and he always found a reason not to do anything else when it rained.
But today, he was sealed up inside his thick-curtained bedroom. The air conditioner was growling as it relentlessly struggled to keep the room at a formidable 25°C. To mask out this continuous rumble, he had his earphones plugged in, the Octavarium blaring in his ears, as he squinted and typed into his computer, oblivious to the weather outside. The only way he could have known was if he looked at the weather widget on his desktop, which clearly indicated it was ‘rainy’ in Chennai, with a ‘thunderstorm’ in the offing. But he never did.
It rained harder and harder into the night. And then it happened. With a clap of thunder, the power went off. The room was plunged into darkness and the only source of light left was the computer screen. Cursing the Electricity Board for the umpteenth time this week, he commenced the now-accustomed ritual of saving his work and shutting down his computer. As he pulled his earphones off, the room was thrown into an almost eerie silence, and he became distinctly aware of the continuous battering of the rain outside.
Suddenly ecstatic, he rushed outside leaving the computer to take care of itself. He regretted not having noticed it any earlier. As it always did, just the sight and smell of it drove everything else out of his mind. Fighting the urge to wander in the streets in this untimely hour of the night, he just sat there, curled up in a chair, watching it rain.
…
A slight tap on his shoulder woke him up. He had dozed off. It was his dad, who had woken up to find him missing from the room. It had been almost an hour since he had come outside. It was still raining, and he hadn’t realized that the power had come back. He returned to his room, and switched the computer back on. But, he was in no mood to code. He wanted to do something else.
For long, he had had the hope of starting to write again, on a blog this time, probably. The kickoff never seemed to happen. The prospect of starting a blog brought with it a tirade of uncertain questions. What will he name it? What will he write about? Blogger or WordPress? White or Black? Two-column or three-column? And so on.
But tonight, none of these seemed to bother him. Everything he did seemed plainly right. He registered on WordPress.com, created a blog, named it, and paused. There were two simple words in his mind for the first post. Maybe, these words were too clichéd. But he didn’t care. To him, being a programmer, it seemed completely natural. And he did write a two-word post. He was a blogger now.
Hello world !
After this seemingly valiant attempt, he glanced at the clock. It was 2 in the night. Stifling a yawn, he C-x C-c ‘ed for the night.
